The ladies of the island were as attracted to the Teacher as they were to the three of us, but I think for different reasons. He liked them as well, and he found sex to be as marvelous a thing as I had promised him it would be. Sex, but not reproduction. For whatever reason, he proved to be sterile, with human women, anyway.
Ian and I got private tutoring, of course, but we didn't do all that well at it. We'd been the boss for too long to slip easily back into the role of being mere schoolboys, but we did pick up a few pointers.
One thing that I was delighted to learn was that the Second Law of Thermodynamics was a purely local phenomenon that only applied to some aspects of a three dimensional universe. I'd known it all along. With a bit of digging, I found plans for a simple device that turned water into ice cubes, and produced electricity as a by-product.
I also finally learned why it took time to travel in time. The way the Travelers looked at it, what we were doing when we traveled in time was taking a defined portion of our space-time continuum, and bending it into the other dimensions. Within that defined portion (think of it as sort of a pipe), space and time remain completely normal. They have to, since if they ever became discontinuous, even for an instant, anyone inside would cease to live, or even to exist.
Now, this wasn't the way I had been looking at what we were doing. It seemed to me that I was working with fields and forces, not bending continuums. I don't know. Maybe I never did really understand time travel. I've heard that DeForrest never really understood what was going on in a vacuum tube. He only invented the thing. Other people, like Major Armstrong, figured out
why
it worked.
So our island was finding a new role in life. It was now becoming a university town. This was good, since its other functions were starting to shut down.
At the shop, all of our subordinates had enrolled at the university as soon as it was opened, and doubled forward and back as necessary, usually completing several years of graduate work in what appeared to us to be a single night.
Within a few days, all of the people in our little company were retrained, barring two of the janitors (a musicologist and a history major, who weren't interested in technical things), and within a few weeks, all of our old machinery and weapons were operational in the new, safe mode.
Sometimes, when there was some bit of trash that we were sure that the world would never need again, we would simply dump it into the sun. More often, it was sent to a recycling center where the stuff was broken down into its constituent atoms, sorted, and stored. Well, things like pure oxygen, argon and nitrogen were usually just released into the environment. Then, if you needed a few tons of pure silicon, titanium or gold, well, you knew where to go.
Now that our engineers had textbooks to go by, they didn't need to be creative at all. They had all the answers that a culture a thousand times older than our own had come up with. If you had a problem, all you had to do was look it up. The girls turned out some marvelous things, but for Ian and me, well, they didn't need us anymore.
We were still in charge and all, but there weren't many opportunities to earn the undying admiration of our loyal workers because of our astounding creativity.
Work got very boring, for me at least. Ian was so wrapped up with getting his Historical Core going that he usually didn't have time to eat, let alone talk to old friends.
In many of the manufacturing plants around, work was getting nonexistent. One day I noticed that the window frame plant, which we had toured in one of our first weeks on the island, was closing down. All of the stock bins were empty, the last of the finished windows were being hauled away, and the machinery was being packed into shipping containers.
Ian and I found the plant manager.
"What goes on here?" I asked.
"Why, we're closing down, sir."
"I can see that. But why?"
"Lack of work, I suppose. We've filled all of our orders and used up all of our raw materials, so it is time to close it all up."
"They stopped ordering windows? Strange. But then, I never could figure out where all of those windows were going in the first place."
"Going, sir? Why, look around you! Every window on this entire island was manufactured right here in this plant, and so was every window at Atlantic Ridge City. All of the necessary repair and replacement windows have been manufactured and stored, so they won't be needing this facility ever again. The machinery is all being sold to a company in Mexico, they tell me. It will be working for many years yet, but I won't. I'll be retiring as soon as we finish getting the building cleaned out."
"I hope you enjoy the rest," Ian said. "But what was that you were saying about a city on the Atlantic Ridge?"
"They never told you about that, sir? How odd. Well, anyway, during the Ice Age before last, the level of the oceans got so low that a few hundred square miles of the Atlantic Ridge became exposed to the air. It's a perfect place for all of us Smoothies to live, for thousands of years. The climate is lovely, there's no local ecology to disrupt, so we can bring in modern plants and farm animals without endangering existing species, and when it eventually sinks back into the sea, there won't be any possibility of problems with causality. My plant made all the windows we'll ever need for the city and all the surrounding countryside."
"I guess they never told us because we never asked. What are they going to do with your old factory building?" I asked.
"I'm sure I don't know, sir. Maybe the university will find some use for it. It's not my concern. I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon."
"You're going to Atlantic Ridge City?"
"Yes. The wife and I have bought a nice apartment there, with a good view of the ocean. It's a two week trip, going back that far, but we've booked a private canister, and we're looking forward to the trip. The wife is calling it our second honeymoon."
"Well, enjoy yourself. I wish you both the best of everything."
"Thank you, sir. I'll give the wife your regards."
As the weeks went on, more and more factories and shops were closing down, their purposes for existing having been completed. In time, I began to notice that the crowds were thinning down, that the concert halls were no longer full, and that the plays often had fewer actors and were being given shorter runs.
Ian asked me if I didn't want to go back and see this Atlantic Ridge City that everybody was abandoning our island for, but I didn't want to do it, not now, anyway. When we got to talking about it, he said that he felt about the same way as I did. Later. We'd do it later.
Then one night I found a new woman in my bed.
Barbara's depression had grown until she had stopped sleeping with me. The doctors couldn't seem to do anything for her. I figured that maybe if I let her have her space, and gave her enough time, she would eventually recover. It wasn't like I needed the sex, what with all the other girls around.
Anyway, having lived with them for years, I had of course gotten to know my household staff pretty well, as well as the ladies who worked at the shop under Ian.
Natually, I asked the new girl what she was doing there.
She said that she worked at Camelot now, in gardening, replacing a woman who had decided to get married to a man who was going to the Atlantic Ridge.
I said that that was nice, and we had a fine night together.
Then, the next day, I found another new girl waiting in the bedroom. I soon discovered that over half of my household was scheduled to leave soon, and that in a few months, they would start having difficulty finding replacements. I decided, what the heck? The place didn't really need a hundred and fifty women to keep it up. Thirty or forty of them could handle things (and me) well enough.
Ian was having similar experiences. It seemed that since we were no longer necessary for the continuation of the culture, our previously infinite sex appeal was starting to wear a little thin.
Barbara's depression didn't wear thin. Instead, it got worse. Much worse. In a few weeks, she became impossible for anyone to talk to, and the Head Chef, a woman named Julia, started taking over most of her duties.
Barbara stopped spending her days with me, as well.
I was making some progress with my boys, but it was slow going. Scuba diving and flying ultralights still frightened them, but we often went horseback riding now.
But I couldn't get them to race each other on horseback. The closest they got to it was galloping three abreast across the fields, like an old-time cavalry charge. That gave me an idea. I had uniforms made up for the four of us, the infinitely flashy outfits worn by the ancient Polish Winged Hussars, complete with golden helmets, leopard skin sashes, scale mail breastplates, sabres, and long lances. Plus, of course, the great feathered white wings going from their backs to high above their heads. Then I found a Killer corporal who had actually served in the Winged Hussars in the early fifteenth century. He showed up in full regalia—just Absolute Panache—to give them some pointers. The boys actually got fairly good with those long, hollow lances, skewering brass rings at a full gallop, but when it came to using a sabre, well, they just couldn't bring themselves to swing one at somebody.
Often, the four of us went sailing. I tried to talk the boys into each taking one of the three yachts, using their servants as a crew, and racing each other, but they didn't want to. They prefered to work together, as a team. Turning them into individuals was going to take time.
One night, at the Bucket of Blood, I got to talking to Leftenant Fitzsimon.
"Look, Fitz, you are a multiply married man, with lots of kids. You have more experience with children than I'll ever have. I've told you the kind of problems I've been having with my boys. What am I doing wrong?"
"Wrong, sir? Why, nothing that I can see. Look. A boy needs a mother who loves him no matter what, and a father who spends enough time with him to show him what being a man is all about. See that he gets those two things, and enough to eat, and he'll grow up all right. But I get the feeling that that's not exactly what you want. You want those boys to grow up like twentieth-century Midwestern Americans, and there's only one way to do that. You'll have to take them to twentieth-century America, say, about 1945, a healthy, peaceful time, really, although it didn't seem that way to the people who lived there. Raise them in the American Midwest, and they'll grow up to be just like you. I mean, if you raise them in Inca Land, they'll grow up being good little Incas, if you get my meaning."
"But how can I do that? My job is here."
"You can do what I do, sir, if your wife will go along with it. Spend your working life whereever the job takes you, and spend your vacations with your boys and their mother. Do it right and they won't even be aware of the fact that you spend most of your time elsewhere."
"But don't you see, my wife is my biggest problem! She is a Smoothie who considers herself to be a murderer, and I'm beginning to realize that Smoothies have a bigger guilt complex than anything a Pagan or a Jew or a Catholic ever suffered from."
"Sir, it sounds to me like the two of you are in need of professional help. You need a psychologist from your own American culture, and there's only one of them on the whole island. He's a friend of yours."
I mulled it over for weeks, and in the end I knew that Fitzsimmon was right. I had to talk with Hassenpfeffer. Still, I procrastinated until one day Barbara was gone. She simply could not be found anywhere on the island.
Frantic, I called together the three Killer officers who had helped me back when we thought that somebody might be sabotaging our first time canister.
"Find her," I told them. "Find Barbara."
"Right, sir," Leftenant Fitzsimmon said. "We'll be back directly, I expect."
They all returned to my living room in five minutes.
"Yes?"
"She's left, sir. She went back to 1965, when the local time transports were first put in. She went directly to the harbor and talked her way onto a freighter that had just delivered a load of building materials here. She sailed off with them, sir, headed for New Orleans."
"Well, stop her! Get her back here!"
"Yes sir, if that's what you really wish. But have you thought it all the way through? Do you really want us to have a military squad waiting for her when that ship docks in New Orleans? What if she doesn't want to go back? Should we force her to come with us? What should our response be with regards to the local people and authorities? To them, this might look like a kidnapping, and then the use of force would seem appropriate to them. When that happens, do we fight back?"
"Oh, how the hell should I know? Why can't you stop her before she gets on that ship?"
"Causality again, sir. You see, the three of us have watched her get on the ship and sail off. Not directly, but through the means of certain surveillance devices available to us. Anyway, her sailing off is now an established fact, and there's no way in the world to change that."
"Shit. Just what kind of surveillance devices are you talking about?"
"Right. Well, there isn't any reason to keep anything from you anymore, is there? We use these 'bugs' that actually look like insects. They can crawl, fly, and have enough intelligence to follow their target at a discreet distance. They have enough sensors to observe everything that happens and enough memory to record about six hours of it. Then they fly home, and let you see what they saw."
"Are these some kind of living thing, or a sort of tiny robot?"
"As I understand it, they are somewhere in between, sir."
"Then how can what a machine knows stop you from doing anything?"
"Well, we know it too, sir, now that we've looked at what it saw. But their very act of recording it makes the event immutable. If we were investigating a murder, for example, and there was a dead body on the floor, we could bug the place, and find out exactly what happened there. We could prove conclusively who did the killing, and have a one hundred percent expectation of bringing him to justice. But we couldn't do a thing for the victim of the crime, except avenge him, of course."